This is the amount of Ricardo's restriction applied to his own general principle of value. An objection, made by Malthus, which to himself appeared fatal, stumbled in the very statement, not conforming to the conditions presupposed by Ricardo. There is, however, some degree of obscurity still overhanging this final section of Ricardo's great chapter on value; and for a large system of political economy, which, without regard to names, should endeavor severely to settle the truth as affecting every part, this particular section would require a more searching consideration. But in a little work professing only to state the separate principles (which happen to be fundamental) and the separate theory of Ricardo, there seems no reason for extending the inquiry beyond the limits fixed by his own views.

CHAPTER II.

ON MARKET VALUE.

A VERY short chapter, and a very bad one, (the worst in the whole series,) has been introduced by Ricardo upon market value, quite out of its natural place; it stands forth in succession by the arrangement of the first edition; whereas it ought, upon any principle, to have ranked immediately after the first. I mention this because the dislocation of the chapter from its true place naturally suggests the cause of its unsoundness; it was a hurried after-thought, introduced to provide for inconveniences which, until they had begun to crowd upon

his experience, the writer had not previously anticipated. What was Ricardo's specific object in this chapter? Was it, as in his great inaugural chapter on value, to amend or reconstitute the old notions current upon this important section of economy? By no means; for that construction of his object there is no opening, since he neither objects to any one point in the old definition and old employment of the idea, nor does he add silently or indirectly any new element to that idea; he neither amplifies the use of this idea, nor regulates by any limitation its logical relations. As he found it he adopts it; as he adopts it he leaves it. Every other chapter formed a distinct precedent against his title to write this. But it was his necessity which threw him upon such an anomaly. He found that a case case was gathering upon him, which would else call in every page for a distinction and a caution. As often as it should happen, - that either to the question of rent, or profits, of wages, or of foreign trade, he should apply his own new laws of value, he would be eternally crossed and thwarted by one and the same form of objections; viz. by those which are drawn from market value.

He would be supposed, by the unskilful student, always to overlook that from which always and systematically he abstracted. The modifications to value, arising out of accidental disturbances in the market, out of casual excesses or casual defects in the supply, are in fact no objections at all. The capital and ruling law determine such an article A to be worth 25. Then supervenes a modification, which, by accident, is equal in virtue to 3; if this modification (from a defect in the supply) happens to be +3, in that case the result will be 28; if it happens (from a corresponding excess in the supply) to be-3, in that case the resulting price will

be 22. But alike in either case the original determination of the primary law has had its full effect. To have reached 28, when a casual disturbance arose from an additional 3, argues sufficiently an original or natural price of 25; to have settled at 22, when a disturbance had arisen equal to the effect of subtracting 3, equally argues back to the original price of 25. Consequently all such disturbances are vainly alleged as answers to the capital laws of value, or as in the very least degree objections to those laws. As well might it be said that gravitation is not gravitation, because a magnet is so placed as to effect the velocity of descent. The gravitation, you may rely on it, exerts its full power without abatement; and all which is neutralized by the magnet, must be fully accounted for. This is what Ricardo contemplates in the fourth chapter. He wishes to check the rash reader by a timely caution, "Do not go on complicating the matter to no purpose, by eternally submitting every assertion upon price to the disturbance of a well-known irregularity. We are all alike aware of that irregularity. It is an irregularity as regards its amount in any particular case; but it is perfectly regular in its mode of action. We cannot tell beforehand what will be the supply of an article in relation to its demand; that is uncertain and irregular; but, once known and certified, we can all anticipate its effects."

The case was the same precisely as when Ricardo announced beforehand that he should neglect the variations in the value of money. What could be the use of stating every proposition as to price three times over; first, in the contingency of money remaining stationary; secondly, in the contingency of its rising; thirdly, in the contingency of its falling? Such an eternal fugue of iterations, such a Welsh triad of cases, would treble the

labor of writer and reader, without doing the slightest service to either. Within ten pages it would become a mere nuisance. Why not, once for all, abstract from such regular irregularities, which affect no principle, but merely tend to make every conclusion needlessly operose and perplexing? That was the course which Ricardo did take in the case of money: he announced his intention of abstracting from all disturbances of that nature: he made it understood, that from this point onwards he would always assume money as ranging at its stationary natural value; that is, at the value predetermined by the cost, without looking aside this way or that to changes in the value from the momentary market supply.

Now, then, exactly that same intention of abstracting from the casual oscillations of a market, which he had announced in regard to money, here in this fourth chapter he desires to announce universally with regard to all other articles whatsoever. He will fatigue neither himself nor his readers, by entertaining an eternal set of changes which can be rung upon all cases alike, and which affect no principle in any.

Having thus shown what it was that Ricardo designed in this chapter, (viz. a general caveat through all time coming, as to a particular useless practice;) and secondly, what it was not that Ricardo designed, (viz. a new view of the subsisting doctrine on market value;) thirdly, let me have permission to show what it was that he ought to have intended. He ought to have disengaged the old doctrine from a foul logical blunder, which (if not the very greatest in political economy) is certainly the greatest upon a point of equal simplicity, and the greatest for practical effect.

What is "market value"? Does it mean value in a market? Precisely upon that blunder has turned the

whole distortion of this doctrine, which else, and separate from its misconstructions, is essential to political economy. Let the reader ask himself this question: What is the antithesis to "market value"? Upon that there is no dispute: all are agreed in calling it "natural value." And what does natural value mean? Confessedly, it means the value which is central to the oscillation right and left, arising from supply either redundant or defective. Consequently, whilst market value means value as it is disturbed by such oscillations, natural value (being the direct antithesis) means value as it is not disturbed by such oscillations. Such being the nature of this famous distinction, how shameful an error it has been in all writers since the idea of market value was first introduced, and much more so in Ricardo, the great, malleus hereticorum, that they speak of "the actual value," 27 i. e. the present or existing value, as a term interchangeable with that of market value. Ricardo does so in the very first sentence of his fourth chapter. "In making labor the foundation," &c., we must not," says he, "be supposed to deny the accidental and temporary deviations of the actual or market price of commodities from this their primary and natural price." Actual or market! why, that would stand, if "market price" meant "price in a market"; but it means nothing of the sort. And, if it was designed to do so, then I ask, for what was it ever introduced? Exactly because price in a market is not always the same thing as market price, was this latter phrase ever introduced, and guarded as a technical term. Every man will grant that the "actual price" may happen to coincide with the "natural price"; he will grant also (for he must) that actual price may happen at another time to coincide with market price: but if actual price, or existing price, may at one time coincide with the

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